Muddling through 2013
Middle East will muddle through 2013
December 28, 2012 -- Updated 1351 GMT (2151 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Aaron Miller: Predictions for dramatic change in Middle East are likely to be wrong
- He says 2013 will be a year when U.S. avoids military action against Iran's nuclear program
- Progress on peace negotiations between Israel and Palestinians seems unlikely, he says
- Miller: The lack of dramatic developments should be considered a positive
Editor's note: Aaron
David Miller is a vice president and distinguished scholar at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and served as a Middle
East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations. He is the
author of the forthcoming book "Can America Have Another Great
President?" Follow him on Twitter.
(CNN) -- Since leaving government almost a decade ago, my analysis of matters Middle Eastern has been, well, annoyingly negative.
And the reason? Best
summed up in a line often attributed to Groucho Marx but actually
uttered by Chico: "Well, who are you gonna believe, me or your own
eyes?"
Aaron David Miller
What I see is an angry,
broken, dysfunctional region that wants to transcend itself and resolve
the conflicts that hold it back, but just can't. And I'm not at all sure
there's a whole lot America -- that indispensable nation -- can do
about it.
Here are my predictions
for 2013 on some of the key issues. This year's theme is muddle through
--neither breakthroughs nor breakdowns.
Iran:
2013 -- The so-called
year of decision -- war with the mullahs who rule Iran or the grand
bargain -- will produce neither. President Obama will go to extreme
lengths to avoid a military strike aimed at Iran's nuclear program and
will not greenlight an Israeli one. Without that go-ahead, the Israelis
will continue to agonize but not act. And the mullahs will be smart
enough not to brazenly give either Jerusalem or Washington an easy
excuse to strike.
2013 will be a year of....
CNN Opinion contributors weigh in on what to expect in 2013. What do you think the year holds in store? Let us know @CNNOpinion on Twitter and Facebook/CNNOpinion
Bottom line --
2013 will be a year of diplomacy, not war. To borrow a conceit from my
friend New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino, 2013 will witness the
Tom and Jerry game in which cat and mouse in the old cartoon continue a
never-ending game of almost gotcha. Who knows? If the Americans and
Iranians try hard enough they might actually bump into one another and
reach a limited deal to keep Iran a few more years away from getting
enough uranium to make weapons. But if you're looking for final closure
on this one, go talk to Dr. Phil.
Arab-Israeli peace:
Panetta: A nuclear Iran is unacceptable
Palestinians get U.N. upgrade
Iran's assault on civil society
Syrian rebels: Defection will spark more
The sun, moon, and stars
really aren't aligned on this one for a big breakthrough. Where should I
start? The January 22 elections in Israel will likely produce another
Netanyahu government that has no incentive to destroy itself politically
by tackling the big issues like Jerusalem and refugees, certainly not
with the Iranian nuclear issue still open. And the Islamists -- Hamas
and Egypt's Mohamed Morsy (who can barely bring himself to talk about a
two-state solution) aren't in the giving mood either. Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is too weak to initiate much.
Bottom line --
The Americans will try and may succeed in getting the Israelis and
Palestinians into a process to talk about borders and security. But the
two-state solution is likely to remain too hard to achieve but too
important to abandon. Persident Obama will probably not be earning his
Nobel peace prize -- yet.
Arab spring/winter:
This is going to be a
long movie. After all, it took the United States a century and half and
bloody civil war to even begin to reconcile the promise of equality
contained wiithin the Declaration of Independence with the
legitimization of slavery contained in the Constitution, and we're still
not there yet.
Still, nowhere in the
Arab world do the trend lines look that hopeful. Neither in Egypt,
Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, let alone Syria, do the Arabs have the three
elements required to set their experiment with democratization and
pluralism in the right direction: leaders who put the nation before
their own political and religious parties' interests, institutions that
are seen as inclusive and legitimate, and a mechanism to ensure that
polarization doesn't spill out into the streets in violence.
Bottom line --
Buckle your seatbelts. No immediate convulsions and catastrophes. But in
the new Arab world with Islamists rising, the political space for the
United States is going to get a whole lot smaller and the dangers to our
diplomats much greater. The key question is at what point the bell will
begin to toll for the kings and emirs in Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi
Arabia, too.
The good news:
But all isn't totally
gloomy. We're out of or getting out of the two longest wars in our
history, we're reducing our dependence on Arab oil, al Qaeda has been
weakened, and while we're not safe we're certainly safer here at home --
at least from foreign terrorists.
Bottom line --
With the notable exception of killing Osama bin Laden, President Obama
hasn't had any spectacular successes in foreign policy, but more
important, he has avoided spectacular failures. If he can continue to
keep us out of trouble, particularly at a time when we need to be
focused on repairing America's broken house rather than chasing around
the lands of Araby trying to fix everybody else's, he'll have done
pretty well. And who knows, if he's patient, maybe he'll even be able to
turn one of those Middle Eastern migraines and root canals into an
opportunity or two. COPY http://edition.cnn.com
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